The Construction of America

In the closing lines of his most recent State of the Union Address, Barack Obama says, "This nation is great because we built it together."

Obama is emphasizing the teamwork that America has had that has allowed it to be great, but is he right?  Did we really build this nation together?  Or a better question: who really did "build" America?

Obama argued America is great we have always worked as a team.  However, when looking at the period of Reconstruction after the Civil War, which we are currently studying, it is obvious decisions were not made together because there was much disagreement on every issue.  Therefore, Lincoln (in the short time before he was assassinated) needed to take charge and tell the country how things were going to happen rather than telling them to get together and decide.  One example of this is that he passed the Ten Percent Plan on his own, which said that to be readmitted in to the Union, a southern state must have only 10% of it's citizens take an oath, and he pocket vetoed the more radical Wade-Davis Bill, that would've made it more difficult to reunite the Union.

This is just one example of us not building the nation as a team, and there are many more.  That's not to say that no decisions have been made together--because many have--but in the history of America, there has been and always will be disagreements.  Therefore, we have been unable to work as a team to solve all of our problems, and that will most likely continue.

I'm not saying Obama was wrong about our nation being "great" (that's a whole new debate), but his reasons were wrong.  In the history of America, decisions have been made by individuals, so I believe it is those certain individuals that have constructed our nation.  A more accurate line, I believe, would have been, "This nation is great because the individuals who have built it were dedicated to helping the entire 'team'."